


nearly brought me to my knees

by figure8



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU
Genre: Character Study, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Reconciliation, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 03:02:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6498232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/figure8/pseuds/figure8
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You were my life,” Bruce says, and Jason believes him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nearly brought me to my knees

**Author's Note:**

  * For [catgoboom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/catgoboom/gifts).
  * Inspired by [this wonderful fanart](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/188413) by catgoboom. 



> so this was going to be a short genfic but apparently the wild brujay shipper in me literally cannot be controlled? i'm sorry? it's still way more of a character study than a ~ship fic~, but, you know.  
> i honestly don't know what continuity i was aiming for here. jason and tim have their new52 friendship, and there's also a vague reference to arkham knight, but eh. whatever works for you.
> 
> jason is in his twenties here, but there are clear references to both him and bruce thinking about each other in a romantic/sexual way when he was still a minor. if that's not your thing, which is totally understandable, you might want to steer away from this one.  
> not beta-read, sorry about that! happy reading <3

_Cigarette daydream_

_You were only seventeen_

_Soft speak with a mean streak_

_Nearly brought me to my knees_

— Cage The Elephant

 

It starts, like most things, with smoke and ashes.

The pit washed away all his scars, the real ones and the figurative. It wiped him clean, left him a blank state. On a physiological level, it cured him of any addictions he used to have, too. When he finds himself itching for a cigarette months later, Jason realizes muscle memory goes a little further than just combat training. It’s muscle memory too, he tells himself, when he cannot keep himself away from the Manor.

It takes time and blood and more time. He builds himself an empire of crime and filth and guns, all the things the Batman despises the most. He tries his hand at killing, explores all alleyways of violence. The spectrum of possibilities is spread wide between his fingers and he chooses the bloodiest path, the crimson end of the color palette. He holds a gun to Bruce’s head and smiles the most insane of smiles. He is the Arkham Knight. He is the Red Hood. He is Robin. He is Jason Peter Todd. Identity is the hardest of riddles to solve.

He’s seventeen, or maybe nineteen. There is no definite answer to that specific question. Did he stop existing while he was dead? Is he even still a person? How does one fill two years of absolute absence? How does one push away the void? He makes amends. He mends broken bonds. Tim was the evident choice when Jason had murder on the brain and Tim is the evident choice now, too. It’s easier to build a family from scratch than to build it back up.

Bruce asks for his forgiveness in everything but words; and then he vocalizes it, too. Jason kills people in Bruce’s city and Bruce fails to catch him, and in every second of freedom he’s allowed Jason can read the silent _Please forgive me_. There has been a crucial misunderstanding over what exactly Jason needs to forgive him for, but then again, that’s them all over.

 

*

 

Alfred finds him smoking in the gardens and has a _legitimate fit_.

“You did not die and go through all that trouble to come back to us for you to slowly kill yourself again, Master Jason,” he admonishes. He extends a hand, probably expecting Jason to give him the cigarette, but Jason just puts it out on the sole of his shoe and then flicks it away. It lands perfectly into the nearest trashcan and he grins smugly.

“I am under no illusions,” Alfred sighs, “But I _will_ ask you to at least refrain from smoking when you are at home.”

Jason doesn’t refute his use of the word _home_. He convinces himself it’s because even an asshole like him wouldn’t want to hurt Alfred Pennyworth.

 

*

 

When Dick appears out of nowhere in Jason’s safe house and snatches his pack of smokes right out of his hands, Jason considers he has the right to feel pissed. Dick flushes them cheerfully down the toilet and Jason takes out a shotgun.

“I’m your big brother,” Dick says, “I’m supposed to keep you from making terrible decisions.”

“I will literally shoot you in the ass,” Jason says.

It’s the longest conversation they’ve had since he came back.

 

*

 

“Could you please—not?” Tim gestures vaguely, and Jason rolls his eyes because this is just _ridiculous_. He presses the cigarette butt into the ashtray on the table, with probably more passive-aggressiveness than the situation warrants.

“Now that’s just unfair,” he glares.

“Alfred worries,” Tim says, and he sounds particularly judging. “Also, I genuinely hate the smell.”

“You are a loser and I do not know why I hang out with you,” Jason says, but he’s not that kind of shitty person so he doesn’t light another one. Tim beams at him in that gentle, sincere way of his. Jason looks down at his hands and remembers them colliding with Tim’s face, his knuckles raw on Tim’s cheekbones. He remembers the burning hunger in his belly and the cool hatred in his veins, and how he thought they could only be soothed by erasing Tim from this world. He imagines a universe without Tim and has to stop before he feels sick.

 

*

 

“I am going to _murder you_ ,” Jason grits, jaw clenched.

Damian just stares at him, very skeptical. The sword in his hands is taller than he is. “You are welcome to try,” he says.

“You cannot go around jumping on people with antique weapons, you demonic creature,” Jason scolds him, but he can already feel himself growing _fond_. It’s an all-around disaster.

“Alfred did tell you to quit smoking in the Manor,” Dick chimes in. When did Dick enter the room? How did Jason not _hear him?_

“I was _sitting on the window_ ,” Jason splutters. “As in outside. My body was outside. The _cigarette_ was outside, for God’s sake—”

“Rules are rules,” Dick singsongs.

He’s enjoying this whole thing way too much.

“I do not particularly care for your health,” Damian says coolly, “But if you upset Pennyworth again, I will cut you into small pieces and feed you to my dog.”

“I thought you were a vegetarian,” Jason hears himself say dumbly.

“Feeding carnivores vegetarian food is irresponsible and the idiots who do that should be charged with animal abuse,” Damian says, looking at him weirdly. “Titus eats meat.”

“I demand a refund on this whole family thing,” Jason groans. “This three brothers for the price of one deal really isn’t working out for me.”

 

*

 

He senses Bruce’s presence before he actually hears or sees him. They’re by the docks, and he’s in his civvies just taking some time off, perched on the railing in a precarious equilibrium with his feet hanging above the water. Bruce walks up to him and settles on his right, elbows on the flat metal bar. Jason sighs, takes one last drag from his cigarette and then hands it to him wordlessly. Bruce makes a satisfied sound low in his throat as he takes it between his fingers, but he doesn’t crush it under his heel like Jason expected him to. No, instead he brings it to his lips and inhales deeply. He doesn’t show the slightest sign of discomfort, exhales a pretty cloud of smoke. It’s obviously not his first time. Now that Jason thinks about it, it makes sense for at least ten different reasons, but it’s still uncanny.

“You're trying to be a cool dad?” he asks, but his voice doesn't sound as teasing as he intended it to be. It's raspy, like the words had difficulty coming out.

“Not really,” Bruce shrugs. “I gave up on that particular label a while ago.”

They smoke in silence, passing the cigarette back and forth. The filter is a little damp from Bruce’s lips, and Jason is suddenly hyperaware of how very intimate the moment they are sharing is. He can feel Bruce’s body heat radiating next to him even if they aren’t touching, even through his shirt and his leather jacket.

“Don’t tell Alfred,” Bruce says.

“ _Duh_ ,” Jason replies.

 

*

 

It’s funny how a single moment can change one’s entire perspective. Jason remembers things he had buried so deep he thought he had deleted them. Not events, per se; not facts. But smells, and feelings, and sensations. The iciness of snow against his bare legs on a night where the Gothamite weather took Batman and Robin by surprise. The sugary scent of Alfred’s chocolate chips cookies fresh out of the oven and still warm and soft. Bruce’s hand on his shoulder, heavy and meaningful. It’s a myriad of tiny memories, like a shattered mirror. Dozens and dozens of glass shards like needles in his skin.

“You should come by for dinner,” Bruce suggests. They’re on patrol, just landed on a rooftop. It’s such an alien thing to hear in that specific context Jason doesn’t react at first, the request not registering.

He scoffs. “Now?”

The clock tower is visible from where they are, indicating three in the morning very clearly under the moonlight.

“No,” Bruce laughs—actually _laughs_. “Monday,” he says, and he sounds like he wanted to say something else—invite him sooner? It sparks a fire in Jason’s heart. It always has—that’s another thing he remembers from _before_. Bruce’s infructuous attempts at guarding himself around Jason never fail to make him feel anger and giddiness simultaneously. It’s a maelstrom of emotions and for a split second Jason considers just jumping into the emptiness, away.

“Maybe,” he says.

He staggers into his safe house hours later, limbs wary and muscles aching. In the shower, under the scalding spray, he jerks off frantically to the thought of being held down by strong arms, a body larger than his. Lying in his bed awake until dawn, eyes fixated to the ceiling, he convinces himself it was the adrenaline that got him hard.

 

*

 

There is an infinity of secrets Jason refuses to admit to himself. They’re unorthodox in the why of their shamefulness, but Jason has always had his very own code of morality. The lives he has taken he wears proudly, like a badge. It is fears and desires he hides away, like two sides of the same damning coin.

If he closes his eyes, he can see Bruce.

 _Before_ , Bruce had a softness to him Jason could grasp. There was the Batman, and then there was the man. Bruce was real because he was flawed only in the most harmless, sensible ways. Jason knows now it was most likely just a child’s delusion, and that Jason’s death can’t have changed him _that much_ , robbed him of his humanity completely; but it does feel like it sometimes. The Bruce he remembers used to wear a pink fluffy bathrobe because it made him feel better on bad days, and stumbled groggily into the kitchen in the morning, useless before a giant cup of coffee. The Bruce he remembers watched cartoons with him late at night and licked popcorn salt off gloved fingers. The Bruce he remembers smiled and smiled and smiled at him, real smiles. They used to crack jokes and play pranks on each other, the camaraderie between them so effortless and playful it felt almost organic. He knows they were never a perfect match like Dick and Bruce were, on the job; but he’s fairly certain that with him Bruce felt sheltered and happy, maybe even hopeful.

Now Bruce is all hard lines and bitterness, the air around him tasting acre like cigarette smoke.

 

*

 

Dinner is a disaster. Bruce ends up sending Damian to his room, and Tim invents an excuse halfway through so he can flee, the traitor. Dick is off planet on some ridiculous League business, so suddenly it’s just Bruce and Jason and the weight of the forgotten lives they used to lead hanging low between them, like the sky right before it rains. Jason can hear Alfred busying himself in the kitchen, dishes clicking together.

“I’m going to smoke,” Jason announces out of the blue, and he stands up without waiting for an answer and walks out to the balcony. He honestly doesn’t know if he meant it as an invitation or if he was trying to get away. Probably both.

“Could I—?” Bruce asks, coming up behind him. He sounds so very much like _Bruce Wayne_ right at that instant, it shakes something deep inside Jason and wakes up parts of him he wished had remained fast asleep.

Jason has a full pack in his pocket, could offer him his own cigarette, but he doesn’t. He just lights up the one between his lips and takes a long drag, and then he passes it to Bruce. Bruce leans back against the bannister, closes his eyes and makes a perfect ring. His mouth is an O, smoke curling upwards. He gives Jason the cigarette back, and Jason is in such a hurry to smoke in order to avoid saying something completely stupid that he forgets to be careful and their fingers touch.

He hasn’t felt Bruce’s hands on him in _years_. Punches don’t count. Punches landed on Kevlar anyway. Their fingers linger, ash falling on Bruce’s skin. Jason retracts his hand.

“Jay,” Bruce says, guarded.

“I thought the deal was that we didn’t talk,” Jason says, warning in his eye.

“There was no deal,” Bruce says.

Jason lets out a sharp breath. He can’t do cards on the table.

“He took me away from you,” he says, voice gone awfully quiet. It’s not about revenge, this time. They’ve had _that_ conversation once or twice already. He hopes Bruce understands. He wants to say _, I had no one else and he took me away from you. I am going to live with this fear for the rest of my life._

Bruce looks like he wants to be anywhere but on this balcony. “I failed you.” He says it like a confession, like penitence. The cigarette is burning away between Jason’s thumb and index, forgotten.

“I don’t care that you didn’t save me,” he admits. “I just thought losing me would hurt you just as much as being lost to you hurt me.”

“Jason,” Bruce whispers, his eyes dark, “It did. It did.”

“No,” Jason shakes his head. “Losing Robin hurt. And the failure, that hurt you too. I was your responsibility. I was a _child_. Of course you suffered.”

“I _mourned you_ ,” Bruce stammers, horrified.

“You put my costume in a display case so you could see it every day and tell yourself _never again_ ,” Jason spits through gritted teeth, bitterly. “That’s not mourning, that’s atonement.”

“That’s not—”

“He took me from you and he walked,” Jason cuts him off. “I know your code. I lived by it. I built my life around it, I swore by it.” He looks Bruce in the eye. “I would have broken it for you. I would have scorched the earth to bring you back.”

Bruce’s smile is terribly sad. “Then you did not live by it,” he says somberly.

“No,” Jason agrees. “No, I lived by you.”

He closes his fist around the cigarette butt, lets the incandescent tip burn his palm. The pain grounds him, roots him.

“Jason,” Bruce starts.

“I understand now what it is you wanted from me, back then,” Jason says, unclenching his hand. “But the kid I was didn’t, and that kid would have given his life for you.”

“They must have told you,” Bruce says, and there is something desperate in the way he enunciates it. “Someone must have told you how I lost it after you died, Jason. You think I didn’t _want_ to kill him? You think I didn’t think about it, I didn’t plan it, over and over again?” He’s grabbing the balustrade behind him with both hands, like he needs to hold on to something or he’s going to reach for Jason. Jason admires his intuition. He doesn’t think he would react well to Bruce trying to pacify him using old tricks. “I have wanted to kill everyone who ever laid a finger on you, Jason,” Bruce says slowly, like he can’t believe he has to explain something so self-evident. His arms are trembling. “I didn’t do it because then I wouldn’t be Batman, and you didn’t die in this war for me to stop fighting it.”

The corners of Jason’s eyes are stinging, water blurring his vision.

“Come here,” Bruce says hoarsely. He still doesn’t reach out but his arms are open now. “Come here,” he repeats, insisting.

Jason stumbles into his embrace, crashing into him in a way that _has_ to hurt. Bruce’s hands immediately find his shoulder blades and his waist, tugging him even closer. He buries his nose in the crook of Bruce’s neck and tries to fight the urge to pull away when his body starts shaking, and Bruce just keeps him there.

“I’m s-sorry,” Jason quivers, and he doesn’t know why he’s apologizing. He has painted houses with blood. He has squeezed lives out of people’s tracheas. But he has never felt more utterly _sorry_ than here in Bruce Wayne’s arms, crying and shivering like the boy he definitely isn’t anymore. Bruce’s lips brush the shell of his ear as he murmurs sweet nothings to calm the storm in Jason’s mind, and Jason tenses abruptly. Bruce kisses his hair.

Jason’s fingers grab at Bruce’s soft sweater, tangle themselves in the fabric. It’s like an enormous weight he didn’t realize he was carrying is leaving him, and suddenly he feels so light he thinks the breeze could take him away, flying. Everywhere Bruce touches him, every contact point is numbing the pain. Jason had forgotten what breathing without suffering felt like.

“I loved you,” Bruce says, very quietly. “You were my family, you were my—” he doesn’t say _son_ because that’s not quite the bond they shared and if Jason can realize that now, Bruce probably knew all along. “You were my life,” he finishes, and Jason believes him. “Of course I mourned you. Of course it hurt. _Jay_ ,” he says, the use of his old nickname stinging like poking at an old wound, “It hurt so _bad_.”

And Jason knows he was wrong, now. The Bruce from before is still there, at the Batman’s very core. All the softness and the humanity and the potential for hope, it is still there. Jason wants to dig into Bruce’s chest with his bare hands and crush his heart. He wants to fall to his knees and kiss Bruce’s boot. He wants to push them both over the bannister. There are endless possibilities. In the end, he just disentangles himself from Bruce, puts a respectable distance between them and asks, “If I hadn’t died, would you have—eventually—?”

“No,” Bruce says, and at least he’s being honest.

“And now?” Jason presses.

Bruce looks away, a slight blush on his cheeks. “There are other ways to punish me,” he says prudently. “You don’t have to make a piece of shit out of me.”

“That’s not a no,” Jason points out.

“Have you ever known me to say no to you?”

It’s tentative, the newfound warmth between them still too superficial, but Jason appreciates the teasing, the affection Bruce pours into his sentences now that he knows he is allowed.

“No,” Jason says, and it’s true. It’s true in a painful, ironic way. Bruce couldn’t deny him even the most dangerous things, and that’s how he found himself in Ethiopia—exploiting that particular weakness of Bruce’s. The only thing Bruce has ever refused him is the consummation of the unhealthy electric bond between them, and Jason cannot exactly blame him for that.

“You’re still so young,” Bruce says, eyes shut, teeth digging into his bottom lip. Jason doesn’t know if he means it as a safeguard or if he’s just in awe. He has about a million comebacks at the tip of his tongue but things between them still feel too awry, too raw. Instead he palms his vest to find his cigarettes.

 

*

 

“Boss,” Jason calls through his com, letting the word roll off his tongue, getting used to it. “There’s trouble by City Center. I’m on it.”

“You good on your own?” Batman asks. Jason wonders if it’s a formality or if he’s actually worried. It’s probably neither. Bruce just doesn’t trust him.

“You can send Robin if you think I need a babysitter,” Jason says flatly, and then he’s jumping on one of the drug dealers.

It’s a fair fight, if not an easy one. There’s a lot of them and only one of him, but he’s faster than all of them combined and he was trained by the best. He lands strategic blows and never shoots to kill. It feels inefficient. It feels foreign. It feels good, too, when he comes back to the Cave and Bruce looks at him with something akin to pride. It feels like being reborn.

 

*

 

Jason always thought it would happen violently.

There was no question of _if_ it would happen, not since he came back, but he did do a lot of wondering about the _how_. Before the—the reconciliation, he imagined he and Bruce would get into one of their endless stream of fights, get physical, get too close, and that one of them would break. After, he still believed for a long while that they could only find each other in blood and pain, in the cruelty of their intertwined fates.

Bruce kisses him so softly Jason thinks he’s going to _cry_.

They’re not in the Cave, they’re not on a rooftop. Bruce is not wearing the suit. It’s not Batman and Robin or Batman and the Red Hood, it’s _them_ , Bruce and Jason.

There are years of longing in the slight trembling of Jason’s hands when they settle on Bruce’s chest. Bruce licks into his mouth like he’s trying to tell him something. He touches Jason with caution—not exactly like he’s fragile, but like he’s precious, like he’s worth too much.

When they break apart to breathe, Bruce looks positively ravaged, his lips red and slick. His voice is thick and coarse.

“God, I want—”

He falls to his knees, buries his face between Jason’s legs. Jason can feel the roughness of his stubble on the inside of his thighs, scratching lightly alongside Bruce’s open-mouthed kisses. Jason can’t remember when and how he lost his pants and his underwear, which is completely ridiculous, but he feels intoxicated.

He has had many fantasies about this moment. Some of them when he was still teenager, almost endearing in their simplicity, wrapped neatly in the blind devotion he had for Bruce then. Most of them are about strength and control, and these came later. He has dreamed of holding Bruce down and fucking him hard, of leaving bruises in places Bruce cannot cover them, of shoving his dick down Bruce’s throat and just taking what he wants. He has also dreamed of Bruce doing these things to him, and frankly he doesn’t know which part is the most disturbing.

Maybe it’s this. Maybe it’s Bruce sucking Jason’s cock while holding his gaze reverently; maybe that’s the most disturbing.

Maybe it’s how he slides into Jason later that night, slow and hot and perfect, how they fuck face to face and Jason _knows_ Bruce thinks they’re making love.

 

*

 

“What are you doing?” Bruce asks drowsily when he feels the mattress shift next to him as Jason sits up. Jason speaks Batman, so he knows the real question is _Why are you leaving?_

“I’m not going anywhere, you big baby,” he sighs. He grabs his leather jacket from the floor, takes out his pack of cigarettes and opens the window.

Up in the sky, the full moon shines. Jason blows circles of smoke into the air and listens carefully until Bruce’s breath evens out.

 

 


End file.
